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Sexism has been defined as “words, phrases, and expressions that unnecessarily differentiate between females and males or exclude, trivialize, or diminish either gender” (Parks & Roberton, 1998: 455). Like other languages, English relays the beliefs and values of the culture in which it is used, in this instance relaying beliefs about gender. Sexism within the English language can be found in its grammar and vocabulary. Miller and Swift (1988) identified examples of sexist language as 1) false generics such as ‘he’ or ‘mankind’; 2) hierarchic and separatist terms, such as ‘man and wife’; and 3) terms that influence the self-esteem of women or their perceived identity, such as using the word ‘girl’ to refer to an adult woman.
More recently, in the study mentioned previously, Torrayo (2014) lists the following examples of sexism in the English language:
• The use of generic masculine pronoun (e.g. Every student has to submit his project); • Word connotations (the hidden meanings assigned to certain words/phrases, e.g. call boy, which signifies call actors before they go on the stage versus call girl, a prostitute; woman with sexual connotations as in “She's his woman”;
• Masculine-derived expressions like “manning the space shuttle”, “manning the phones”, “sportsmanship”, “penmanship”, and “doing a man-sized job”;
• Masculine word first (Mr. and Mrs., boys and girls, his and hers, husband and wife, brothers and sisters, he or she);
• Compelling women to define themselves as ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs.’ Whereas men have a unanimous ‘Mr’ which does not define their ‘relationship/age status’; and
• Using negative words for sexually expressive women but not for sexually expressive men (bitch, harlot, tart, whore, slut versus stud or male prostitute). (Torrayo, 2014: 26)
Here again femininity is linked to submissiveness (coming second to men) and to the sexuality of the body linked to the word, whether that word is related to marriage/relationship or literal sexuality or sexual behaviour. Language thus constructs/shapes the gender stereotypes that morph into sexism and sexist language. Sara Mills (2008) takes a new look at sexism in language, in her
87 work she identifies two forms of sexism, namely overt and indirect. According to her, overt sexism is “clear and unambiguous” and indirect sexism “can only be understood contextually in relation to the interpretation of surrounding utterances” (Mills, 2008). She goes on to describe indirect sexism as being used to categorize a set of stereotypical beliefs/ideologies about women (Mills, 2008).
“For many feminists, women are particularly subjected to the effects of ideology. In many ways, it is clear that there is a range of belief systems about women which do not ‘fit’ with the reality of women’s lives.” (Montashery, 2013: 106)
Idealistic portrayals of femininity and the female body, whether visual or linguistic, thus do not represent the reality of women’s lives, femininity and women’s bodies. These women who don’t fit the traditional/stereotyped ideal are assigned markers that then relate the meaning of gender through language. Montashery did a study that was concerned with “the description of structures in language which seem to determine that terms associated with gender will acquire particular types of meanings in such a way that those terms associated with women will take on a range of clearly identifiable connotations” (2013: 105). The study was thus an examination of what particular structure in language ensures that gender is identified in relation to women, and how these structures lead to meaning and connotations associated with women. The structures that were examined were Metaphor and Metonymy as dominant figures in the construction of gender through language.
Montashery describes metaphor not as a “literary form” or as a “deviation from some supposedly literal language”, but rather as something that affects the meanings we create as it is “one of the building blocks of our thinking” that may influence individuals to “think about certain scenarios in particularly stereotyped ways” (2013: 107). An example of how metaphor can construct gender and femininity can be extracted from pet names men tend use for their girlfriends, wives or partners. Some of the examples Montashery identified as “Honey, Sugarplum, Sugarcake, Flower, Kitten, Babybear, Sweetie and Peanut” (2013: 108). Nicknames such as Sugarplum, Sweetie and Honey relay a message of women being sweet. This could be having a sweet/nice personality but could also allude to women being considered as “sweet food to be devoured by men”; or in other categories they are considered as an "aesthetic object to be enjoyed by men (e.g. Flower, Star); or as a pet to play with by men (e.g. Kitten, Babybear)” (Montashery, 2013: 108). The use of metaphor thus highlights the way stereotypical representations of femininity and women come to be constructed through the use of language: 1) object to be devoured by men; 2) object to be admired by men; 3) pet to be played with by men or 4) a vulnerable animal in need of protection that a man can provide.
88 It is interesting to note that none of these nicknames give the women power of agency, instead they are “food, flower or some harmless and helpless animals”. According to Montashery, the use of these words to address and categorise women presents a problem in two ways:” firstly we construct gender [femininity] socially” and “secondly we deny their [women’s] agency and identity” (2013: 108). This can be seen not only in the stereotyped portrayals of femininity but also in the use of language pertaining to women that do not ‘fit’ the expectations of men, a good example of this is the use of the word ‘bitch’. Montashery calls this phenomenon of metaphor a tool of gendering within language, the so called “metaphorizing [of the] female body” (2013: 108). The second structure that was examined in this study was Metonymy which is a figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated with it, e.g. using ‘the bottle’ to refer to an alcoholic drink, or ‘a skirt’ to refer to a woman. A well-known metonymic saying is the pen is mightier than the sword (i.e. writing is more powerful than warfare) (Montashery, 2013: 108). Mills examines the technique of fragmenting the female body (which has been discussed in visual context in previous chapters) in pornographic literature, as a form of metonymy that constructs ideologies of gender or femininity.
Sara Mills (1995) notes that there are two effects of fragmenting the female body:
“First, the body is depersonalized, objectified, reduced to its parts. Second, since the female protagonist is not represented as a unified conscious physical being, the scene cannot be focalized from her perspective—effectively, her experience is written out of the text. Fragmentation of the female is therefore associated with male focalization—the female represented as an object, a collection of objects, for the male gaze.” (133)
When examining the stereotypical portrayals and visual techniques that are applied to construct gender or femininity in previous chapters of this study, fragmentation of the body was one of the main techniques that relayed messages of objectification and sexism. As discussed, visual examples of fragmentation are common in advertisements in the way they crop and focus on parts of the body such as the legs, backside, lips, hips and eyes independently of the rest of their bodies. Thus when this metonymy of fragmentation is applied to language and the shaping of gender, it refers to the way in which women are often described based on specific parts of their bodies, e.g. Doll face, Sugar lips, Sweetheart, Sweet cheeks and Fat Ass (Montashery, 2013: 108).
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6.1.3 The Gendered/Stereotyped Language of Advertising
This study has previously examined how advertising makes use of gender stereotyping in its visual elements, especially concerning the representation of female bodies and femininity. The way these advertisements make use of language to form ideas about gender has also been subject to investigation by feminists. Advertisements are seen to embody “all kinds of changes a given society experiences, be they economic, social or referring to personal or group identity” (Cook 1992). This then explains the way the portrayal has ‘seemingly’ started to move away from stereotyped presentations of females and femininity in the way they have adopted ‘femvertising’ and feminist messaging. Though modern media is rife with tales of this new ‘genderquake’ (in favour of women), “which promotes the rhetoric and symbolism of female empowerment and personal freedom” (Plakoyiannaki & Yorgos, 2009: 1412), advertising still shows undertones of stereotypical ideologies concerning women, femininity and female bodies. The reason for this is because the attractiveness of the advertisement relies on the fact that “it must not present some ‘undefined/unspecified’ object/person”, instead it needs to be founded on “some readily recognized archetype” (Pawelczyk, 2008: 313). Fowles (1996) explained the frequent use of categorizing and stereotyping of gender in advertising as a spillage of simulations of men and women because “target audiences are captivated by gender imagery and seek out those models, performers and performances that best exemplify cultural concepts of maleness and femaleness” (1996: 215).
Particular attention has been paid to how femininity and females have been portrayed within advertisements based on the frequent use of archetypes and stereotypes. As the investigation has revealed, language can be regarded as a medium that influences our perceptions and portrayals of gender, the way language is used thus aids in the way femininity is perceived and how female roles are performed and portrayed. With regards to how advertising makes use of language to portray women and femininity, Tuchman (1981) found that mass media, including advertising, “symbolically annihilate” women, i.e. that:
“…women have been eliminated, marginalized, or trivialized, or they have been instrumentalized and presented as commodities themselves [and] all this is achieved through a traditional depiction of women, one with emphasis on their sexual attractiveness and/or domestic servitude.” (Pawelczyk, 2008: 314)
It is thus apparent that advertisements prescribe assumptions of what femininity, what the ideal female body/appearance/ beauty is and therefore what it means to be a woman. When viewed in isolation, each type of advertisement depicts one aspect/characteristic of gender definition but when viewed together, “they reflect the complexity of contemporary womanhood” (Lau, 2016:
90 1627). The way advertisements make use of the language to convey messages of gender, and particularly femininity, thus defines the beliefs about femininity. Mill and Mullany (2011) explain this as the way language is used to produce “an ideological system that regulates the norms and conceptions for ‘appropriate’ gendered behaviour” (2011: 41).
What this literature analysis has revealed is that language has a link with forming and passing on ideas of gender, it has also revealed the way sexist language (in the English language) focusses on stereotypical female roles and characteristic portrayals. The way advertisements use language to relay ideologies of gender and femininity thus rely on certain techniques and structures, grammar and vocabulary to shape and construct meanings of gender. Relating to femininity it seems that sexist language, whether through grammar and vocabulary or language systems such as metaphor, focusses on the traditional/stereotypical version of gender where women are portrayed as submissive (coming second to men); reliant on men/vulnerable and in need of protection (usually from men); and stress/emphasis is still placed on the sexuality of the body of the female. Thus the same ‘categories’ or ‘characteristics’ of stereotyped femininity and gender portrayal that has been noted in visual format, in advertisements discussed previously, can also be seen in language and the use thereof. In this way, it “contributes to the construction and communication of gender” (Maass & Arcuri, 1996). Just as feminists drew attention to sexual objectification and beauty standards in advertising and media, and third-wave feminism reclaimed female bodies and identities with ideas of empowerment and self-love, so feminists have addressed sexism in language and started to re-appropriate these sexist words such as bitch and
slut (e.g. Slutwalk movement3) in a way that portrays ideologies of empowerment, choice and
freedom.